The Shinbone Star: “The Long Black Veil”, The Unissued Answer to it and the Possible Backstory

Most of us classic country music fans are familiar with Lefty Frizzell singing “The Long Black Veil”. He was the first one to recorded it. He had been in a career drought and this song, so unlike his usual honky-tonk style, reached the sixth spot on Billboard Hot C & W Sides chart. It was his best song in five years! It opens with:

“Ten years ago, on a cold dark night
There was someone killed 'neath the town hall light....”

Just writing those two lines I can hear Frizzell's rich voice in my head.

In 1959 Danny Dill presented to fellow songwriter Marijohn Wilkin a poem he wrote. She fine tuned it. The story behind Dill's inclination to write it is that he took inspiration from Red Foley's “God Walks These Hills”, a news story regarding the unsolved murder of a priest who was actually killed beneath a town light in front of witnesses and, lastly, the legendary veiled woman in black who regularly visited the grave of silent movie star, and one of Hollywood's first heartthrobs, Rudolph Valentino. Drawing from those sources Dill and Wilkin created a dark ballad about a man falsely accused of murder who refuses to give an alibi. The woman, who he was with that night, was the wife of the man's best friend. The man was willing to go to his death in order to protect his and the woman's secret as well as her reputation in addition to saving his best friend from the heartache of a double betrayal.

One day piddling around on YouTube I discovered that Marijohn Wilkin wrote and recorded, in 1959 or 1960, the answer to “The Long Black Veil” entitled “My Long Black Veil”. The recording was never issued on an album or just as a single for radio airplay. I reckon whoever uploaded it at YouTube probably has a demo. In this song the woman gives her side of the story. The first two lines of the first verse mirror the first two lines of “The Long Black Veil” and continues thus:

“...The few at the scene were wrong as could be

Because the man they accused that night was with me...”

In the second verse, as if Wilkin could hear the people wondering why the man didn't give an alibi, she wrote:

“But what could he do? And what could he say?

For that one stolen night he just had to pay.

He couldn't tell a soul that I was out with him

For the whole town knew I belonged to his best friend.”

On my 'Ballads' playlist at YouTube the song follows “The Long Black Veil”, as it should.

Following Wilkins answer to hers and Dills song is what I think of as the accidental backstory. The song, written and recorded by Texas country singer-songwriter Jason Boland is called “False Accusers Lament”. He didn't set out to write a backstory to “The Long Black Veil”, it just happened. He was almost through with it when it dawned on him it could be the backstory to “The Long Black Veil”. The first time I heard this song I thought of “The Long Black Veil”. In Boland's ballad the narrative is from a witness who confesses to lying and tells why he lied and therefore partook in the condemnation of an innocent man who was hung. Several years ago Boland said, on the YouTube online show 'The Texas Music Scene TV', that he never agreed with how things went down in “The Long Black Veil” yet he recognized it as a great song. Boland said “...now let me get this right. He's dead and the best, the best friend doesn't know about it, what happened, and she walks in a long black, you know I just, I needed something else in my story. I went ahead and gave it how I see the world working a lot of times which is I know somebody knew and they wanted it to go this way and they set it up and everybody else was just pawns in it.” The song begins thus:

“I said I'd seen the killin',

could identify the villain

who shot a man beneath the town hall globe

I was one of few

The jury never knew

About to line our pockets

With the bankers jealous gold...”

As for the bankers wife:

“He said his lovin' woman sinned

Let alone with a friend,

He couldn't have his childrens mother shamed...”

This false witness, in the chorus, speaks of “nightly terror”, hearing the guilty gavel and seeing the condemned mans body swinging, concluding in that chorus “They had me swear upon the Bible and I lied.”

Boland's very likely backstory to the "Long Black Veil" is on his and his bands, The Stragglers, 'Rancho Alto' album which was released in October 2011. The first two songs above were wrote in 1959. From then to 2011 is 52 years. So you could say it took a really long time to get the backstory, the confession of a false witness. I'm going to line them up here as I have them on my 'Ballads' playlist. Let me know in the comments below what you think about all this.

Since it's impossible to find any information online about "My Long Black Veil", including lyrics, I obtained the latter playing the song on YouTube, stopping and starting until I had the words. Thankfully, Wilkin sang in a clear, understandable voice.